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The global Environment Performance Index: Scandinavia sweeps the top 4 as the worlds best.

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Environmental Performance Index Scandinavia leads the worldThe Science of a healthy life

2016 years Environmental Performance Index tells us in one more way, what we already know, and that is that Scandinavia is one hell of a wonderful place to live. The world's four best nations according to the index are all Scandinavians with Finland, Iceland, and Sweden being the only 3 nations in the world with an EPI score above 90.( All three still have plenty of room to improve much more, and obviously do need to improve much more. )And just behind that trio, ranked as number four in the world is Denmark. So, just what is the Environmental Performance Index? Read on to find out.

music of the day while you are reading our articleHinterlands by Netherbird

Quality of life, society and Earth in one little Index.

The Epi Index is measured across 9 important metrics which, when put together try to evaluate how well various nations perform during our modern day Anthropocene era.Those areas are.Health Impacts, Air Quality, Water and Sanitation.Water resources, Agriculture, Forests, Fisheries, Biodiversity and Habitat.And finally Climate and Energy.

The absolutely most interesting thing with the environmental performance index is without a doubt the combined quality of life impact that each nation has on a global scale since that is truly what the index evaluates. That global impact is of course, what actually matters now that we live in this global era of Anthropocene. What you do, your way of life is not just locally important anymore. The things you guys do in your own city and country is not just about that small block or you and your neighbor. In our modern, connected world, for better and worse, what you and your city and country do, and how you conduct yourself matters globally for all of us.

Climate change, sustainability, individual health, the way we impact ourselves and each other. These are the real hallmarks of how well a nation is performing in our mutually shared modern day world. And that is how we as humans define our own shared future. Our mutual future of our global and individual well-being, healthy lives, food security, and clean air. Poverty and hunger. Improved food quality and nutrition, Equality, improved health and longevity. Modern, clean energy, non-polluted safe water, cars and industries, and food producers that do not destroy our health and planet.

Climate change, in the words of UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon, is the “defining issue of our era,”.

And he is right because all these things directly tie into each other. Just as how we as individuals, directly and indirectly, affect each other all around this beautiful pagan planet.

Planet Earth

[ A Pagan Paradise

Based on

Science,

Health &

Human needs. ]

Looking at the index we can see that between 2000 to 2014, Paraguay lost a bat shit crazy 24.6 percent of its entire tree cover, more than anywhere else on Earth. And that is certainly not how to do it. We need sustainable, thriving forests. Trees are vital when it comes to maintaining a thriving wildlife and a healthy nation. Healthy thriving forests are also crucial when it comes to mitigating climate change.

Gladly tho, Paraguay has, since 2012, seen a 40 percent decrease in tree cover loss, aided by the Zero Deforestation Law and other newly minted conservation initiatives.However, to recover from the current situation that progress has to be maintained and incrementally improved even further upon.

Why does deforestation matter? Well, as I mentioned earlier. Thriving and healthy forests are vital to our ecosystem and biodiversity.From a huge amount of animal species to berries and plants, water quality and amount, climate change mitigation, and the air we breathe.

Did you know for instance that deforestation accounts for as much as 14% of yearly worldwide CO2 emissions.

Having said that, it is important to note that plenty of countries do quite a lot to manage a healthy and continually thriving forest, making sure that their pulp and paper industries are as sustainable and responsible as possible. But even so, it takes quite a few years of perpetual effort to maintain and regrow what has already been destroyed, and a lot of species and biodiversity loss can never be replaced.

The biggest reason for deforestation is however not the pulp and paper industry but agriculture. Making it one more reason why our global agriculture and food industry need to rapidly adopt modern, sustainable practices.

The future belongs to a sustainable Earth

When it comes to climate and energy one of many positive standouts is Costa Rica which managed to achieve a 99 percent renewable energy generation already in 2015. All while other nations like Rwanda still rely on charcoal and firewood which together accounted for 75 percent of the country’s 2012 energy consumption.Which of course is pretty bad!.

But, what is not bad at all is what is about to happen in Rwanda.

You see, Rwanda have an ambitious goal to provide it's entire population with 75% renewable energy no later than 2030.

And in the cold north, the Scandinavian nations are all doing very well when it comes to reaching 100% renewable energy production as soon as possible.Right now Iceland leads the world with the lowest CO2 emissions per kWh indicator, with almost all of its electricity and heat generation derived from renewable energy sources. For natural reasons, geothermal energy provides more than 87 percent of Iceland's heat and hot water demand.

While it is true that much more can and needs to be done, worldwide, in every single nation, city, and village. What I also see not just in the EPI index for 2016, but everywhere in the world, is a wonderful progression towards something that can only be described as pretty amazing. Just look at Rwanda and the immense change they will do in roughly 10 years time. Things like this happen all over the world every single day. There will always be some negative voices in the world ( like Donald Trump ), there will always be those like him that would wish for the entire world to never progress. But those voices have already lost.

And as such, every single day we make progress together towards a healthier and more sustainable world. A mutual world that is more equal, less wasteful, more developed, efficient, safe and advanced, all at once.

Yes, it took us an awful lot of time to reach this turning point, but now we truly have. More needs to be done, much more. But every day that goes by is one day bringing us closer to a much better world, and that progress towards a much better tomorrow is what I see in this years environmental performance index and the actions of various nations across the world.

You can find links down below to the epi 2016 index and a complete list of all the 180 nations to see how your own country is measuring up.

Photography by NASA. This gorgeous photo of Saturns rings was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft's narrow-angle camera on June 9, 2016.It was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) from the rings.The real life scale is 7 miles (11 kilometers) per pixel. And how mindblowing is not that?

Last Few Published Books and Articles

Your own life is your stylecontemporary art & products for your healthy fit life style

Each of us is the sum of our own unique lifestyle, thoughts, and touch. Be it in person, or through the way we live. This uniqueness is evident even in our own persona. Each and every one of our life choices in all of life´s big and small moments. It is further, ever-present in the way we have slowly built and shaped the castle and life which we call our home.
You can feel and see it, in the choices of your clothes, and other peoples fitness regime. It is persistent throughout our art choices and the way we train and live our very own healthy fit life.
It is forever present inside our deeply individual thoughts, and it is perpetually stamped in the essence of our unique nature.
Read on beyond the break and dwell deeper down into today's fitness school question.

A healthy life is a daily process created by making healthy science based choices.Do you know the right answer?.

Question number 44 in our School of Fitness.
Time for a short and sweet little one.
As stated in the subject line, lean muscle mass has another weight/density ratio than fat, so a body mass that is made up of more fat and less lean muscle mass will display a bigger mass at a lower body weight, while a body that has a greater amount of lean muscle mass will actually have a higher body weight compared to what its body mass might make you believe.

Read on beyond the break and dwell deeper down into today's fitness school question.

At any point in time there is a history of past moments, both lived and never experienced which all lead up to and beyond the here and now.
Strings of time and lives stretching further out from this particular point in time as wilderness own roadside of multiplying pathways reaches out, leading perpetually forward and away into the branching future.

Fitness is built upon the science of you.Do you know the right answer?.

Question number 43 in our School of Fitness.
You already know that getting outside for your daily daylight shower is tremendously good for #VitaminD production and keeping your circadian clock healthy & primed.
But that is not all.

Getting out and about in daylight also boost your t cell capacity.

But what exactly does that mean?, read on beyond the break and dwell deeper down into today's fitness school question.

Fitness is built upon the science of you.Do you know the right answer?.

Question number 42 in our School of Fitness.
Fitness has been established in scientific studies in the last few years as a health-improving daily life painkiller.
Making it even better is the fact that it comes completely free of cost and nerve-wracking & time-consuming doctors appointment and unhealthy side-effects. Lowering pain and debilitating health issues such as arthritis while fortifying your lifespan and health.

But is that tremendous gratis painkiller effect applicable to menstrual pain too?.

Arctic Sunrise - Year 4.5 BillionThe camel that could have been a leopard.

One of planet Earth´s most unique land-living animals still roaming about in the wild also happens to be one of the cutest and most enchanting, and gentle colossuses that have ever existed. Yet, somehow, despite the towering size and unique characteristics of these majestic critters they are also one of the lesser talked about wildlife stars. And so it happens that by now they are like so many other species highly endangered without anyone really paying attention.

But perhaps that is the reward that life gave these majestic beings that float across the land they call home as if they are majestic land dwelling whales. A backseat in the human consciousness as we proceeded to decimate their global population with 40 or so % in less than 30 years.

Question number 41 in our School of Fitness.
Beneath the tasty, delicious joy and sexiness of a life built on plant-based food and fitness, the weights you lift, the miles you walk and run. The mountains you climb, and the sandbags you punch and kick there is not just a burning passion and increased life quality. Nor is it just a question of the enhanced health and joy you can touch and feel deep inside both body & mind.
No, there is also this marvelously progressive thing called science. Because all the physical fitness things, the sweat and healthy living discipline that others see are ultimately powered by the all-encompassing facts of biological life.

Sugar is a much beloved sweetener. Craved like a lovers touch by most biological beings that dare to ever look into the abyss and allow its tastebuds to grace this natural force of addiction.

But as much as all things living seemingly enjoy the taste of sugar and more modern artificial sweeteners. Scientifically speaking the bad health impact of sugar ( from obesity to diabetes and cancer risk, poor dental health and non existing nutritional value ) and other sweeteners have thankfully turned countless of humans into die hard "no sugar" please sentinels. So let us take a brief look at a brand new 2019 study and let us find out if this study too will add even more reasons to say no to sugar and other sweeteners in your food and beverages.

Question number 39 in our School of Fitness.
I have talked about telomeres in years past, and fitness too obviously :).
But such is the world of fitness, science, and health, it often revisits old "truths" and sometimes upends them because our knowledge has deepened, while new studies at other times will simply fortify and acknowledge what we already knew to be true.
So what will happen today as we travel back to the world of that peachy sounding telomeres thingy that keeps wiggling its cute little tail inside of us? Let us find out.
My Question:.
For this particular study, published in European Heart Journal, Nov 2018, we´ll uncover what happens to the length of our telomeres when we do long distance endurance training, high-intensity sprint intervals, nothing at all or lift weights in a so-so way in the gym ( yeah, color me unimpressed by the strength plan in this study, but hold on to that thought as you read on because I will get back to the fairly inadequate strength training and why that too matters. ).
The question, which option is the best for maintaining the length of our telomeres and what is the worst?.

Nothing fancy or big worded to say today, I am just drinking some tasty fresh black coffee while various death metal songs keep pumping through my livingroom gear.
Yes, what a glorious morning :).
But while I am enjoying my morning routine, getting ready for the gym and my own workouts as well as the health and fitness regimes of today's PT clients I am also reading up on science and sustainability from around the world. And one of the pieces that stand out is a tonally laid-back piece by Swedish outlet DN. They spent the better part of a month or so following Swedish sustainability advocate Greta as she continues her quest to bring much-needed awareness to the sad state of the world and the essential, deep-rooted changes we as a species and global civilization urgently need to undertake.

Question number 38 in our School of Fitness.
Time for a short one.
Obesity is no friend of the bettering of our health and longevity.
Just as how the old school act of serious bulking never did anyone's health and fitness levels any favors. And pointing this scientific reality out is not about fat shaming. It´s about helping the world and its individuals turn the tide toward better health, and better fitness. And doing so does not remove peoples individual right to pick whatever body size and fat percentage that they so prefer.
My Question:.
We already know that obesity ( and a fat powered high BMI ) increases unhealthy factors such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol. And it often increases depression, drowsiness and general sedentary choices. Which indirectly leads to worse health in numerous ways. But if a person with a high fat powered BMI is deemed healthy as far as those traditional markers are concerned is excess fat itself still bad?
Put in another way, will a higher amount of excess body fat still lead to worse health even if your bloodwork turns out ok and you do not feel depressed and drowsy and you do hit the gym?.

Question number 37 in our School of Fitness.
Yes, it is once again time for you to put your thinking cap on before you proceed without hesitation through the hallway of healthy fit wonders and science :).
You already know that keeping fit and lifting your weekly weights and doing your daily cardio is nothing but a rejuvenating choice. It's good for your strength, duh.. It is wondrously good for your harty heart health, and it aids your cognitive and creative processes. It scientifically speaking lowers depression and tardy drowsiness. And if you have been keeping up with me over the years, you also know that keeping fit on a regular weekly basis also lowers your physical age by quite a noticeable margin too.
But even small ordinary things like taking a daily walk carries with it a huge life long health and fitness impact.

My Question:.
What happens with our skeletal lean muscle mass for people above 70 years of age if they take a few thousand steps more or less per day for 2 weeks time?.
Read on to reveal just how big the impact of that tiny change can be below the break.

Question number 36 in our School of Fitness.
All forms of fitness activity is a tiny little pill of good health no matter who you are.
But is the simple act of lifting weights one to three days per week enough to substantially lower the risk of cardiovascular related mortality?.
Yup, that is how easy and straightforward question number 36 turned out to be. And why? Because we have a brand new study to lean back on when it comes down to the (obvious) answer.
Read on to reveal the complete Q and A below the break.

But before we head on over to the meaty real life data of our reckless modern day life, which the 2018 IPCC report painfully laid bare, walk with me as I step out on frosty cold northern shores for my morning walk.

Just a Thursday, spent on northern shores.
And this is the way I started this gorgeous little Autumn day.

Life itself is this majestic mirror world of brilliance and incompetence. Eternally merging and reflected, individually disengaged yet perfectly synchronized and attached to each other and everything else.

Like the leaf that finds itself stranded on the wayward peaks of a stormy ocean. They are each others counterpart, yet entirely different. Individual objects, entwined and interconnected. Disengaged and perfectly unique.

And today, there´s officially a full-blown Autumn song playing out there in nature.
Gorgeous and sunny, on a Sunday =). Wind free, except for the tiniest of breeze that you can almost not see or feel as it slowly makes it way through the crown of leaves that towers above.

But it is, none the less, Autumn.
The colors of the trees reveal it. The pale blue September moon that hangs high up in the middle of the day is another telltale.

The science of health and fitness should always be your lifelong guide.

Fitness is as wonderful for your health as it is for landing you a more sculpted and capable body over time.
But that will never change that even fit people (quite a lot of them) are doing the right things for the wrong reasons. Case in point the fit and good looking girl you can see in the IG video I am linking to, she obviously trains hard and regular while being in great shape, and she does know quite a few things about the body and the science of staying healthy and fit.
Which is wonderful on all counts.
But like so many other gym goers she is seemingly misinformed about a few things too ( on the other hand, so are we all :P ). Allowing wrongful information and knowledge to shape her choices and the choices of other people that gulps up everything we fit people believe to be true. However, if you are willing to listen to it the beautiful science of health and fitness will guide you towards a better body and better health and better workouts if you pay attention to real fitness science instead of personal opinions. You see, there is nothing wrong with the exercises she is doing. But outside of the wonderful world of human anatomy, there is no such thing as an upper or lower butt muscle as far as your exterior appearance goes, nor is there a meaningful difference as far as your practical fitness capacity and workout goes.

Click through and let us talk about Gluteus Maximus, Medius and Minimus.

But what is it exactly? And why is something that sounds so cute something truly terrible that we need to take seriously as a global whole.
To most people, it is more than likely just another ridiculous phrase keyboard warriors throw around once a year while they too waste this world to the point of no return.
But this ever-moving yearly event day is anything but deadly essential.

Every year this day signals the point in that year where we have used up all the naturally replenishing resources of this planet.
And beyond this point, the planet is losing its inventory for the next year(s) ahead and it's capacity to restock.

Which if we are talking about corporations and business leaders is something that would cause pretty much every corporate leader out there to die from a heart attack if it persistently happened to their business. But when its Earth, people just shrug their mindless shoulders and look the other way as if the greenhouse we are subsisting in isn't the singular thing that feeds and house us all.

Right now, if you enter any given gym, the wonderful world of barbells will conjure up as many opinions as there are fitness girls on Instagram, no matter the subject.
And plenty of opinions are exactly that, personal opinions, formed by peer pressure in the gym, on social media, or by fit vixens looking to make a bigger following by posting daily stuff which may or may not be factually correct.

There are out of date school gym coaches still living in the past, badly informed parents, friends, big brothers, big sisters, commercial interests only looking out for the next conference call, as well as uninformed writers working for big tabloids which just happened to draw the assignment to make a puff piece on fitness.

So let us instead look at science and what it actually has to teach us about the range of motion for any particular exercise. And for the purpose of this article, let us focus on a Squat centric use case since legs and ass are thankfully all the rage anyway :).

'Today' (another today ) while enjoying my first cup of coffee standing outside on my sun-drenched porch, I could hear something sneakily make its way through the underbrush and thick tall grass and florals that intermix with the deep dark, and thankfully, untouched old forest at the edge of my property.

Fast forward just a little bit and I could start to see the movement in the thin youngling trees and the tall flowers. Something was out there, touching here and there making the wild plants and florals sway as it drew nearer me.

A growing number of people in the world adopt healthy, fit living by going increasingly more vegetarian for a long range of personal reasons and or due to scientific reasons. Some of those reasons often include the substantial increase in cancer and diabetes risk that eating red meat and highly processed foods causes, or the impossible mathematics behind an entire world eating ever higher amounts of meat, or the incredible amount of pollution that animal food production causes.

And facts are, that all those reasons are equally good, sound and true, so it does not even matter why you do it. It is a good and healthy choice to eat less red meat, and by doing so you will contribute towards a healthier you, and a healthier world.

Around the world, the vaquitas are sadly not alone, there are countless of animal species, plants and all that´s facing the threat of extinction in ever greater numbers. And the pace is accelerating, so it´s not business as usual.
Worse, this is all down to man-made issues.
It got nothing to do with prey and predatory fluctuations. And it got nothing to do with natural events and Earths naturally changing cycles.

A long and well established connective tissue in the way I talk and write, and think about health & fitness is that we are all connected through this global ecosystem we all share.
Which is why I have over the years pointed out that living in a sustainable way is ultimately all about health. Individual health & planetary health. People that are opting to eat shit just isn't healthy. Neither from a planetary or individual perspective.

Just as how healthy fit people that´s living unsustainable, just isn't healthy living people either.

Question number 35 in our School of Fitness.
Once we venture beyond the glorious realms of leg and glutes training, there is the never-ending hallway of kicking and boxing to explore and conquer.
But what else lies beyond the joy of those fit & healthy cornerstones?.
Well, if it was not obvious so far in life, martial arts and legs and glutes have their equal in the colossus that is weighted back training.
And when it comes down to weighted back training, actually, when it comes down to working the upper body at all, there is one exercise which I will never hesitate to put front and center (together with deadlift), and that is 'Standing Barbell Row'.
Here is my question:
Standing Barbell Row will challenge and work you from top to toe.
But can you list all of the muscles which you will activate when you do this bad boy in a properly challenging way?.

Views we catch in the rear view mirror as we leave #worldmeatfreeweek behind us.

The Lost World.

Good and healthy vegetarian food is able to provide health & fitness improving nutrition for far more people, despite polluting much less and using up a lot less landmass vied towards animal farming.
And you can quote me on that because that simple statement is 100% based on science & clear-cut facts instead of peoples personal opinions and conjecture.

In fact, food production from animal farming is already using up 83% of our global agricultural land.
Yet, it is only managing to deliver about 18% of the calories we consume. And does that situation not sound completely unsustainable and fool-hearted to maintain?.

Question number 34 in our School of Fitness.
Yes, we absolutely love our leg and glute day. The challenge it provides is a huge mountain of fun to climb every single week.
But, did you know that you are not just strengthening your lower body when you are building stronger legs, ass, and hips?. Of course, you do. You know damn well that those leg days are crucial for the health and wellness of your lower back and abs too. And it sure does tax your heart and metabolic functions too. However, let us go upstairs towards our brainy area with this question.
Here is my question:
Is it true that weighted exercises in the gym for your leg and glutes will increase the production of healthy neural cells? ( which are crucial for the capacity and health of our brain and entire nervous system )

This is the lost world XVIII.
And how life in the Anthropocene is the tale about the enemy of all things living.
Healthy living is nothing but the science of life.

With the rising tide of the Baltic sea far beneath me, I towered the surrounding world.
Looking out from the crest of the Scandinavian coastline. This was still a place lost in time and mist. A mountain entirely dressed in green and trees, moss and berries, sand and soil, and it is, as much a mountainous castle growing ever taller as it is the place where salt and cold black water comes crashing in to embrace the land of the Vikings.

At the crossroads of the Anthropocene.
May 22 is 'The International Day of Biological Diversity'.
A day which, is by now, our essential every day reality.

May 22 is both a perfectly ordinary Tuesday in your life and the global 'International Day for Biological Diversity'.
But that is not all this week is all about. We also have the endangered wildlife day, which happened on May 18, and birthday number 70 for IUCN.
And, as such this entire week represents an opportunity for each of us to make it a healthy fit day for the entire planet and our individual self.

Also, if you are present in the incredibly lush and beautiful high coast area of Scandinavia, Sweden next Tuesday you are more than welcome to
join me and my coworker from Scandinavian.Fitness for a sweaty fit workout at the gym, lifting weights and grunting at Friskis, Örnsköldsvik at 0730.
Once we are done at the gym, we will head outside for a walk at 0830 and hopefully enjoy beautiful weather together with the pristine nature of Scandinavia.

Question number 33 in our School of Fitness.
Legs and ass and back. That is the holy trinity ( together with the fourth pillar, our abs ) of building a strong and capable and athletic body.
But what about the makeup of our upper legs?
We have the backside of our legs, which we call the hamstrings, and on the front, there´s the thing most people simply call the quads.
But let us dig deeper down into those mighty looking quadriceps and the rest of the anterior side of our legs.
Here is my question:
Can you specify which muscles make up the bulk of what we call our quadriceps and anterior leg muscles?.

a Norse View Imaging and Publishing is located in The High Coast of Scandinavia.

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